‘This Is My Desire’: Film Review

Like any good science documentary, “Human Nature” starts with a hypothesis. The filmmakers posit that audiences are bored by the dry format of most science docs, but that there is a better strategy to present complex concepts about biology in such a way that both educates and entertains.

The famous quote from 13th century Sufi mystic Rumi about the place beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing provides the title of I'll Meet You There, writer-director Iram Parveen Bilal's domestic drama set in a Pakistani immigrant community in Chicago.

How many women drummers can most people name? Tomboy pointedly doesn't try to fill that sparse category. Instead, this enlightening but uneven documentary profiles four representative drummers from different generations and with a range of musical styles.

Terminally ill pets and their desperate, distressed caretakers are those that seek Dr. Marty Goldstein’s miraculous help.

You wouldn't think that sex addiction and testicular cancer are topics that could be mined for any but the cheapest of laughs. And Hooking Up would prove you right.

Two people, each unhappy with their lives, meet and form an unlikely emotional connection. It's a time-honored narrative formula, but Amber McGinnis' debut feature employs it to uncommonly moving and funny effect.

Mayor Musa Hadid is a celebrity of sorts in Ramallah, the historic Palestinian capital in the central West Bank, situated just a few miles north of Jerusalem. But it’s hard out there for this idiosyncratic, handsomely attired and mustachioed character, greeted often by excited kids and curious adults whenever he is spotted in the streets of the bustling town he tries to better for its citizens, burdened by the stifling politics of the region.

A quarter-century after starring in a film called Floundering, James Le Gros still makes an ideal embodiment of his generation's ambivalence about joining the world of squares. In Gary Lundgren's gently warm Phoenix, Oregon, the actor plays an unpublished comic book artist who, after years of tending bar for others, is talked into starting a business of his own.

A rideshare with a giggly geek driver who may be a serial killer. The staggering-through-the-ink-black-woods-with-nothing-but-a-flashlight look and mood of “The Blair Witch Project.” A mystic schlock demon like Candyman, the Slender Man, or the spectral figures from “The Strangers.” A Victrola in the middle of the road, cranking an ancient warbly ditty à la “The Shining.” A cabin full of snowy TV screens out of the “Poltergeist” showroom.

A rideshare with a giggly geek driver who may be a serial killer. The staggering-through-the-ink-black-woods-with-nothing-but-a-flashlight look and mood of “The Blair Witch Project.” A mystic schlock demon like Candyman, the Slender Man, or the spectral figures from “The Stranger.” A Victrola in the middle of the road, cranking an ancient warbly ditty à la “The Shining.” A cabin full of snowy TV screens out of the “Poltergeist” showroom.

A three act play-like look at a certain kind of man's response to the ascent of Donald Trump, The Misogynists casts Dylan Baker as an all-purpose bigot who, deep down, probably knows he's reveling in his last chance to be himself, and better cram in as much as possible. It's a tour-de-force for an actor who's more than willing to be loathsome, and will be welcomed by both Baker's fans and those of writer/director/provocateur Onur Tukel.

A college student proud of his array of mental disorders reacts oddly to being expelled in Inside the Rain, Aaron Fisher's feature writing/directing/acting debut.

An indignant, activist doc about one of those subjects most people agree is crucial but unsexy, Chris Durrance and Barak Goodman's Slay the Dragon takes up the scourge of gerrymandering. Viewers who don't need that word explained to them —it's the convoluted drawing of legislative district boundaries, done in favor of the governing political party — may feel a feature film is overkill.

Dim echoes of David Lynch and early Roman Polanski abound throughout “The Carnivores,” a fitfully fascinating mix of teasing narrative opacity and stylized psycho-thriller atmospherics.

In the striking pre-title sequence ofSchoolgirls,a choir of youngsters move their mouths silently, as though their voices have been stolen from them.

In a family with 10 children, all raised around horse racing, isn't one almost mathematically guaranteed to grow up to be a champion? A sense of inevitability hovers over Ride Like a Girl, despite the film hinging on an underdog theme: It's about one of the family's daughters, after all, and girls don't win the Melbourne Cup.

How many newspaper stories, magazine features and TV segments have been produced so far that marvel at the revolutionary capabilities of CRISPR while giving almost no idea at all how the gene-editing discovery actually works? Those who lament the state of science journalism should take note of Human Nature, in which Adam Bolt and helpful scientists offer an easily understood introduction to techniques often described with head-scratching phrases like "it's a word processor for DNA!" A cogent,

Director Philip Harder, whose previous credits mostly consist of music videos for such performers as Liz Phair, Hilary Duff, Foo Fighters and Prince, has chosen ambitious subject matter for his feature narrative debut. Tuscaloosa, a coming-of-age drama set in 1970s-era Alabama, deals with such issues as mental illness and violent racial clashes.

The screen adaptation of James Patterson and Liza Marklund's 2010 best-selling crime thriller The Postcard Killers begs several questions: Shouldn't Patterson, who seems to produce a book every other week, be concentrating more on quality than quantity? Why is it that serial killers in bad movies and books seem to be less interested in murdering their victims than mounting conceptual art projects? And finally, why was this mediocre adaptation starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan retitled The Postcard

“You have to understand, we’re not here to be happy,” a so-called spiritual adviser counsels one of his wards in a Catholic seminary — a rare moment of truth in the shadowy morass of governmental and theological manipulation that consumes Ivan Ostrochovský’s impressively icy Iron Curtain noir “Servants.” Though happiness has never seemed the objective of priesthood so much as a kind of affectless peace, both are in short supply in a film that jitters and shivers with anti-authoritarian sentiment